Wwii Veterans See Ranks Diminishing

Memorial Day Spirit Seems Lost In America

May 25, 1997|By JOHN de GROOT Staff Writer and Staff Writer Terence Shine contributed to this report.

"Yeah, Memorial Day used to be a big deal," John Eriksson says. "They had big parades with hundreds of guys marching in uniforms.

"But not anymore."

Eriksson figures he's entitled to talk about a national holiday dedicated to those who died fighting for this country.

At 76, he still has nightmares of friends who were beside him when they fell on the blood-soaked sands of Iwo Jima.

"I dream of them at least once a month," he says. "Only they're still young while I've grown old."

Several days before Memorial Day weekend, Eriksson is talking with some of the guys at the Disabled American Veterans Clubhouse on Northeast 13th Street in Fort Lauderdale.

"Memorial Day's no big deal anymore," says John Von Schlicher, 75.

Von Schlicher spent more than a year in various hospitals after the house he was in took a direct hit from a Nazi tank shell during the Battle of the Bulge.

"I don't think half the people even know what Memorial Day is anymore," Von Schlicher says.

"Sure they do," Al Pastore says. "They think it's for picnics."

"They should have been at that picnic we had at Iwo Jima," says Eriksson, the old Marine. "We lost 2,500 guys the first day!'' It's hard to say exactly when Memorial Day became more a long holiday weekend, the unofficial start of summer, than a day set aside for the solemn remembrance of those who gave their lives that we might live in peace and liberty.

"I think it happened when all the Second World War vets started dying off," says Paul Leuck, commander of Fort Lauderdale's American Legion Post 36.

Founded in 1926, Post 36 is the oldest veterans' organization in Broward County.

In the heart of Fort Lauderdale on Federal Highway, the post's clubhouse once boasted a second-floor dance hall, a sprawling ground-floor lounge, a restaurant and a meeting room.

"This was a real showplace," Leuck says. "But now the building is falling apart. We closed the second floor years ago because it's so dangerous."

The dwindling ranks of Fort Lauderdale's oldest Legion post are almost as shaky as its crumbling clubhouse, Leuck says.

"Five years ago, we had 800 members," he says. "Now we're down to less than 500, and most of them don't come around. I guess there's only about 40 of us left that you could call really active."

The Fort Lauderdale Legionaires won't be offering hand-made paper poppies in exchange for donations - an annual fund-raising campaign for disabled veterans that began after World War I - in front of their clubhouse this Memorial Day.

"It's just too much trouble with all the permits you have to get from the city for us to give out our poppies," Leuck says. "So we'll try to raise money with a Poppy Day spaghetti dinner instead."

A few Legionaires will be attending the Memorial Day services held each year at Fort Lauderdale's Memorial Gardens, Broward's largest public cemetery and the final resting place for hundreds of veterans.

"But I can't say how many of us will be there," Leuck says. "I'll be there. And maybe two or three others from our post. But I just don't know."

Leuck remembers when Post 36 organized a large honor guard for the Memorial Day ceremonies at the cemetery every year.

"But now we just can't get any volunteers for that sort of thing," says Leuck, 63, who fought in Korea.

"The guys from the Second World War were more active," he says. "And there were a lot more of them."

World War II veteran Al Pastore understands.

"We came back to ticker-tape parades," Pastore says. "The Vietnam vets came back to people throwing garbage."

John Trax is a Vietnam vet and president of Fort Lauderdale's Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1966, which has also been asked to take part in this year's Memorial Day ceremonies at the city cemetery.

But like the city's American Legion post, the VFW can't find enough members to make up a color guard for the Memorial Day ceremonies. "Volunteers are tough," says Trax, whose post is the oldest VFW chapter in Broward County.

The ceremony is scheduled for 10 a.m. at Memorial Gardens on Southwest Fourth Avenue near State Road 84.

"I heard the Fort Lauderdale Police Department will be there with a color guard," Trax says. "So it should go OK."

But Trax says VFW Post 1966 members will give out paper poppies on Friday - May 30, the official date for Memorial Day.

"We've only got enough volunteers for just the one day," Trax says. "And we'll be lucky to break even. People just aren't that willing to give us donations in return for our poppies anymore."

In the end, the cruel culprit is time.

"Fewer and fewer Americans can remember a time when this nation actually lived in fear of an enemy attack," says Michael Hahn, of the Florida Department of Veterans Affairs.

"Years ago, everyone remembered the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor and German submarines sinking American ships in the Gulf Stream off South Florida," Hahn says.